Whiskey Lullaby
by Shaldana Blackwater
Summary: Harry & Ginny's story after the War, as told by Ron Weasley. Short, one-shot, COMPLETE.


_This plot bunny just would not leave me alone. It is inspired and wholly based on the song, "Whiskey Lullaby" as by Brad Paisley. It is an amazingly sad song and a favourite of mine. This is a one-shot, no sequel, no companion.  
_

* * *

Whiskey Lullaby_  
_

They were destined as soul mates from the day they were born. Anyone who saw them together knew this simply by watching them. It started the day they first met at King's Cross Station, right before the barrier to platform 9 ¾. It was very brief. She simply wished him a quick, 'Good Luck' and he hardly acknowledged it, but it was the beginning of a legacy.

In Ginny's first year, her Harry, to the delight of everyone, had rescued her. Another brick had been laid in to the foundation of their relationship, though it was not much of anything at that time.

By the time Harry was in sixth year and Ginny in her fifth, they were inseparable. Hermione and I were both guilty of not being as good as friends to Harry as we could have been the summer before sixth year. Hermione was spooked from the Department of Ministries and for awhile, she was jumpier then old Mad-Eye. The brain left me with some problems too, and Harry just sort've fell through the cracks, I guess.

Ginny was there to pick up the pieces though. She latched on to Harry when he was at his worst. After Sirius went through the Veil, Harry became suicidal, and no one noticed except my baby sister. Somehow, she just knew, and she saved him, and brought him back from the brink. Ginny saved Harry from us all and while most of us had become wrapped up in following Dumbledore hither and yon, they became joined at the hip.

They were perfect for each other. She kept Harry distracted from Voldemort while others worked around him. His powers was growing faster than he could handle it and she gave him a reason to live while most everyone else, even those close to him, were trying to kill him. Our ignorance of him was how we killed him. We should have seen, but we didn't, and by doing that, we killed them both.

The war was horrible, worse than I ever dreamed it could have been. Harry was treated like a weapon, and by the time Hermione and I noticed, it was too late. The death toll was beyond what any of us expected. Voldemort was killing anything that moved, making no distinction between Muggle, or Wizard. If you were a Muggle or Muggleborn, your life was forfeit. Being a Wizard in support of the Light was to paint your head with a target. Spies were everywhere, and we couldn't trust anyone, not even family. Betrayal from friends and family became common place and putting all of your trust in any one person was to sign your death warrant.

It was Percy that sold Ginny out to the Death Eaters. Draco Malfoy took her and it was five long months before our spies managed to get word back to us that she was still alive. Harry was a mess. All of us began to see that his power had grown, but that he was slipping. The first time I saw him crack off an '_Avada Kedavra' _at a Death Eater, I knew that this war was going to end soon. Harry's control was slowly slipping. He wanted it finished. He wanted his Ginny back and he no longer cared how it was accomplished. He wanted Malfoy dead and Voldemort's head on a pike. He barely slept, rarely ate, yet he kept going. Voldemort kept feeding him visions, most of them fake, as to where Ginny was being held.

When we finally managed to find Ginny, she was gone. Oh, her body was there, but mentally, we couldn't find our little Gin-Gin any longer. Draco Malfoy had broken her, and she would not leave him. Harry slaughtered Voldemort that day. It was a horrible battle. There were Order members, Death Eaters, Unspeakables, Aurors, and even though we could see who they were by their clothing, you had to watch your back. The lines were being redrawn every second of battle and Draco Malfoy was killing Death Eaters as fast as Harry and I.

In the end, Ginny left with Malfoy. Harry left in pieces. He Apparated away, his heart shattered in to more pieces than we think he could have scraped back together.

Hermione and I married six months after Voldemort's death. The Wizarding world was still reeling, but recovering and rebuilding. Harry was at the wedding, but he was just a shell of the man that he once was. He came alone and stood up as one of our witnesses. Ginny and Malfoy did not show up for the ceremony. Malfoy would have been killed on sight, if he had. Harry arrived smelling like Ogden's finest, and got worse as the day went on. Malfoy showing up in the middle of a Weasley wedding with a drunk Harry – that would have put quite the twist on what was actually a fun wedding. The only dark spot was when Ginny showed up, alone, in time for the reception dinner. She did not stay long, just long enough to say hello to family, wish my new wife and I the best, leave behind a present and eat dinner. Neither her nor Harry even so much as glanced at each other. By that point, I don't think Harry was seeing much of anything anyway.

* * *

_She put him out like the burnin' end of a __midnight__ cigarette  
She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin' to forget  
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time  
__But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind  
_

* * *

__

The years passed. The Wizarding world hailed Harry as a hero, of course, but there were only about four or five people in the world that could get to Harry without getting themselves hexed on sight. He built a cabin in a remote area of Wales. It was protected by every charm, shield and whatnot that you could possibly imagine. Harry stayed there, the rest of his days.

Hermione and I tried time and again to lure him from his sanctuary, and every now and then we succeeded, but when he would visit, we knew the truth. Harry was dying. Ginny's betrayal was first and foremost in his thoughts and there was nothing we could do. He was drinking himself to death. He looked like a ghost that simply hadn't the grace to lay down and die just yet.

We tried everything. We even sent Snape after him, one of the very few people Harry ever trusted in his lifetime, and who never let him down. Snape came back to us after a week and told us that he did not expect Harry to live to see his 50th birthday. It was worse than we thought. Harry rarely ate. If he was hungry, he drank. If he was thirsty, he drank, and he cursed and mourned Ginny with every breath he took.

Eventually, we moved on. Hermione and I had a family of our own to take care of. Harry had to deal with his demons, but we could no longer help him. I guess we were guilty of giving up.

The years passed even faster. Our first grandchild was due to start Hogwarts soon. We decided to pay Harry a visit. We had not seen him in about four years, and had not heard from him in about a month. Despite his condition and not caring, he rarely went longer than a month without sending us an owl. Not that his owls made a lot of sense, but at least we knew he was still drawing breath.

* * *

_He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger  
And finally drank away her memory  
Life is short but this time it was bigger  
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees  
_

* * *

We reached the Apparition point, in the clearing just outside the cabin. The silence was oppressive. The wind was not dancing through the trees and even the birds were silent.

Unconsciously, Hermione and I linked the fingers of one hand together, and drew wands with the other, though I think we knew what we would find. When we reached the door to the cabin, there was a white envelope tacked to the wood. I reached a hand up and pulled it off. Tears were running down our faces, and we had not even opened it.

All of his hurt, pain and sorrow were poured in to that letter. He loved her still, after all of these years. He said he would miss us all, but his heart could not heal. Love is not found in the bottom of an empty bottle, it was found in his Ginny and she did not love him. He wrote that he would love her until the day he died.

Hermione burst in to tears, and I pushed open the door. It was not locked.

* * *

_We found him with his face down in the pillow  
__With a note that said I'll love her till I die  
_

* * *

He had passed out on his ratty couch, empty bottles of Ogden's Firewhiskey strewn about. We gently rolled him on to his back to find that it was true. Our Harry was gone.

Hermione and I figured he must have suffocated or just given up. It was over. He was no longer in pain any more. We gathered up his few possessions, and then prepared to bring Harry to the Burrow, where mum would take care of him and prepare him for burial.

He would be buried at the Burrow, like the Weasley son he always was.

* * *

_And when we buried him beneath the willow  
__The angels sang a whiskey lullaby  
_

* * *

The funeral was small. We had barely told anyone of his death, only those who needed to know. The news would not be released to the press until the next day, in order to protect our privacy. The Wizarding world would mourn for a time, but life would return to normal eventually.

To our surprise, Ginny showed up for the funeral. We didn't talk to her that often. Hermione and I tried to forgive her over the years, but it was hard. We could not understand why she had stayed with Malfoy, after all he had done to her, but she did and in the end, she had killed Harry as much as if she had strangled him herself.

I tried to talk to her underneath the willow, but her face was a stone – unreadable, stoic and dead. I smelled whiskey on her breath, and fear shivered down my spine. She would not talk to me or anyone else, for that matter. She Apparated away without saying good bye.

We went back to our lives, once again. In a way, it was a relief. Harry had always sat in the back of our minds, festering. Now he was gone, and it felt like a burden being lifted, a very heavy burden that had been carried about for over 30 years.

* * *

_The rumors flew but nobody know how much she blamed herself  
__For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath  
__She finally drank her pain away a little at a time  
__But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind_

_Until the night...  
_

* * *

We heard more about Ginny than we saw of her in the following years. We had heard things here and there, that she was spiralling in to a despair as deep as Harry's had been. Her children came to us to beg for help. They did not know what to do, and they had families of their own to care for. Their mother was dying before their eyes and her despair was reflected in their eyes.

We promised to go check on her ourselves, and they left, hope and relief showing on their faces.

Hermione and I Apparated to Ginny's home, where she was living, kept company only by her three cats. She left Draco the day after Harry's funeral, and never spoke to any of us about it, though we all knew the true reasoning behind it.

* * *

_She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger  
__And finally drank away his memory  
__Life is short but this time it was bigger  
__Than the strength she had to get up off her knees  
_

* * *

It was like being at Harry's, that final time we saw him when we found him dead. Her home was silent, there was no smoke rising from the chimney and the silence was oppressive.

We pushed open the door to her little house, and saw immediately that Ginny was gone.

* * *

_We found her with her face down in the pillow  
__Clinging to his picture for dear life  
_

* * *

Eerily, in the same manner as we had found Harry, Ginny had passed out on her couch face down on the pillows. When we rolled her over, we found that she had Harry's picture clenched in her stiff hands. We didn't even cry this time. It was almost expected, and it signalled the end of the sorrow that had shrouded our hearts for so many years.

We captured her cats, gathered her belongings, and took Ginny to the Burrow. Mum and Hermione prepared her body for burial while I contacted her children. Malfoy was nowhere to be found and I didn't give a damn anyway.

* * *

_We laid her next to him beneath the willow  
__While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby  
_

* * *

After much discussion with her children, it was decided that we were to lay her beside Harry, beneath the Willow tree, just outside where we used to play Quidditch here at the Burrow, all those years ago, during happier times. Even her children knew that she still loved Harry after all of those wasted years, but the war and Voldemort had taken a part of us all with it. Perhaps now, they could finally be at peace.

There were not a lot of tears shed at Ginny's funeral, as we laid her to rest. In our minds, she died years ago, and had been buried when Harry was buried. As we pulled our wands to move the earth back to cover her coffin, the clouds burst, and rain fell in torrents.

It only seemed fitting that the skies mourned for us.


End file.
